Rockaway resident Lew Simon scolds the city for continuing to delay a fully-funded and long-awaited reconstruction project promised to Centerville 25 years ago. (Lee Landor)It was another meeting filled with empty promises and transparent excuses for residents of the Centerville section of Ozone Park.
On Tuesday night, they heard, once again, that HWQ411B — a 25-year-old, fully-funded, $40 million city project to reconstruct the broken roads of Centerville — has been delayed.
This time, representatives from the Departments of Transportation and Design and Construction blamed new policy changes for the holdup, which would push back the project’s start date by one year to the spring of 2011, or fiscal year 2012.
“Every year you say ‘next year’,” resident Lew Simon told DDC Program Administration Assistant Commissioner N. Venugopalan during the meeting, which was held in the Ozone Howard Little League center.
Venugopalan, speaking over frustrated sighs and sarcastic remarks, said the cause of the delay is the lengthy process of property acquisition. The city cannot begin construction — or complete design, for that matter — until it owns the titles to each of Centerville’s 28 blocks.
The DOT Queens borough commissioner, Maura McCarthy, told residents the city’s Law Department changed its property acquisition policy in 2006, forcing the agencies to redo any acquisitions they had already completed.
Using charts and a projection screen, Venugopalan estimated that by April 2010 the city will have completed property acquisition, the production of maps, designs and rendering and appraising land value.
Only after each homeowner — who will lose between 100 and 1,000 square feet of land through eminent domain — is compensated, can construction begin, he said.
The residents were skeptical. “I just hope we live long enough to see the project begin,” said Howie Kamph, president of the Ozone Park Civic Association.
Since 1983, the DOT, DDC and Department of Environmental Protection have been discussing the massive project to replace streets, sidewalks, curbs and pedestrian ramps, and install new water mains and sanitary and storm sewer systems in Ozone Park.
Having patiently waited for two-and-a-half decades for this seemingly never-ending process, the residents have requested that the city make temporary repairs. Walking around the neighborhood has become a frightening activity, according to Simon. “You can’t push baby carriages, wheelchairs. You can’t even walk without breaking a leg.”
But, in anticipation of HWQ411B, the city has refused to rebuild crumbling sidewalks — which cause frequent flooding — or to repave streets dotted with large potholes. According to McCarthy, once the DOT repaves a road, it cannot touch the road for at least five years.
Mitch Udowitch, a representative for state Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Glendale), suggested that temporary repairs begin now and HWQ411B be rescheduled to begin in FY2013. This would leave five years between repaving and reconstruction.
But McCarthy warned that delaying the project would result in a loss of funding. Refusing to believe that, Udowitch reminded her that the project has long been fully funded.
Once they complete their land acquisition maps, the DDC plans to hold a meeting with homeowners at which it will explain how much land will be taken and what sort of construction will be done.
In April 2009, Venugopalan said the DDC and DOT will hold a public hearing and make its final design presentation. Currently, DDC plans include the reconstruction, repaving, rebuilding and installation of 10.5 miles of roadway, 150,000 square feet of sidewalks, 7.5 miles of curbs, 3 miles of water mains and 2 miles of sewer replacements.
